Lung Cancer (LC)

Scientific Coordinators of the Disease Area

Prof. Dr. Michael Thomas (TLRC), PD Dr. Rajkumar Savai (UGMLC)

Administrative Coordinator of the Disease Area

Dr. Birgit Teucher (TLRC)

CONTRIBUTING PARTNER SITES

ARCN, BREATH, CPC-M, TLRC

OVERVIEW

Lung cancer is a high incidence and high mortality disease. The two main lung cancer types are small-cell-lung carcinoma (SCLC; 20-30% of cases) and non-small cell lung carcinoma (NSCLC; 70-80% of cases). Patients presenting with SCLC have a particularly poor prognosis, and almost 40 % of NSCLC-patients present with metastases at time of diagnosis. Surgery, radiation, chemotherapy, and on a limited scale, targeted treatments —alone or in combination—are used to treat lung cancer. Limited knowledge of which individual molecular markers impact the propagation and spread of the disease impedes the development and use of targeted therapies; hence the treatment success is very variable. Our research focuses on the identification of relevant molecular markers urgently needed to advance matching of targeted treatments to patients, with the ultimate goal of developing personalized therapies to improve patient outcomes. Lung cancer research at the DZL is an interdisciplinary and integrative program exploring clinically well characterized sample sets with epidemiologic, genetic, epigenetic and systems biology approaches.

MAJOR RESEARCH GOALS

Knowledge based optimization of an early clinical trial pipeline through validation of treatment efficacy and development of predictive diagnostics and individualized treatment regimens

Development of sequential biomaterial acquisition in clinical cohorts including assessment of alterations indicative for tumor progression and therapy resistance